Welcome

Hello and welcome to my blog.I'll be voicing my thoughts and opinions on the creative process as well as other random topics that enter my mind. I can't promise to be entertaining or informative, but if you like genre fiction, movies, TV or comics then there should be something to interest you.Any errors and foul language are my own.

Saturday, 27 April 2013

X is for X-Ray Specs

When I was a young boy, I was always amazed by x-ray photographs, the cameras that could see right through you and take a picture of bones surrounded by the very pale glow of flesh. I often wondered what it would be like to be able to see like that, until I watched X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes starring Ray Milland. It's an old film (early 1960's if memory serves) with a shocking conclusion that quickly made me change my mind.

My interest in possessing such a power was helped along by comic books, but not the stories themselves. Years ago, the imported US comics had regular advertisments inside them. There was one that promised an Atlas-style physique, but the one that always caught my eye was the page full of jokes and tricks - one of which was x-ray specs.

I started wearing glasses when I was nine or ten, and when I had my first pair, I would imagine putting them on and being able to see through walls and clothes. Didn't happen, of course, but it was a funny joke for a few days. Then I used to pretend I was Clark Kent.

Now, years later, I still joke about being a Kent (insert your own punchline here...) and as I sit here, I find myself wondering about those trick specs with their swirling patterned lenses and tiny hole to look out of. I've a vague idea of how the trick might work - like when you place the underside of your wrist against your nose, and if you look at it in the right way it seems to have disappeared - but there must have been more to it than that. Mustn't there? Part of me would like to know the truth (the cynic who believes they were a complete rip-off) but the facsinated child deep within doesn't want to know the answer, wants to believe in the wonder of it all...